“Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?”

A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Politicians are like dogs, Their life expectancy is too short for a commitment to be bearable

in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.

Later I learned to improve my forecasting—if necessary by asking the visitor in advance what subjects he intended to raise with Nixon.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.

The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.

A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.

Who controls the money controls the world.

History knows no resting places and no plateaus

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

The entire country is rallying behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and there is no alternative to Modiji.

We have not come here to take prisoners But to surrender ever more deeply To freedom and joy.

Everyone got to choose what they wanted to wear on stage, and by the third time going into wardrobe the stylists already knew what I’d love and what I would never throw on my body in a million years. They were fantastic, and it was so lovely working with them.

Arsene Wenger asked me to have a trial with Arsenal when I was 17. I turned it down. Zlatan doesn’t do auditions.

You realize in life, not that many things matter that much, but your choice of a spouse is everything.

Misery is a choice. I chose happiness.

Let anyone speak hundreds of things against you, do not resent by giving a bitter reply. If you tolerate such things, you will certainly be happy. If anybody wants any money from you, and you are not inclined to give, do not give. But do not bark at him like a Dog.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.